Subprime

Wait, Banks Can Shut Off My Car?

Ross MacDonald
One spring evening in 2012, after getting off a shift at Señor Frog’s bar and grill in Las Vegas, Candice Smith drove to the Palace Station casino to cash her paycheck. When she returned to her car, it wouldn’t start. She knew what the problem was: the starter kill switch her lender had installed on the vehicle.


“They Had Created This Remarkable System for Taking Every Last Dime From Their Customers”

In 2011, Don Foss, perhaps the richest used-car salesman in the history of the world, commissioned a half-hour film about himself and posted it to YouTube. The Don Foss Story opens with one of his TV ads from the 1970s, ads for which Foss hired an actor to portray him. (The real Foss, who is portly and balding, says he might have played himself “if I looked like Robert Redford.”)